TV VIEWAS JOHN Barnes put it on ESPN on Saturday, "If Liverpool didn't score, Everton would have won 1-0". Whether or not that gave Evertonians any comfort after losing their FA Cup semi-final it's hard to say, but it did emphasise the point that scoring more than the opposition in a sporting contest is generally a good thing if you wan to win.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course, like in golf, where you strive to have a lower score than your opponent, which is what Gerry Lester Watson managed to do unto Lodewicus Theodorus Oosthuizen in the Masters play-off. That’d be Bubba v Louis.

Bubba, fairly famously, never took a golf lesson in his life, his Da showing him how to grip his clubs when he was a small person, and he’s just been doing his own thing ever since. In other words, now that he’s a Major winner, he’s a living nightmare for those coaches paid humongous amounts of money by professionals to help them reconstruct their swings, and the like.

“Thks 4 help, but gonna do it Bubba way now: au naturel,” you’d like to think most of them texted their gurus after Bubba slipped on that green jacket.

The Late Show with David Letterman was one of a couple of dozen Bubba showed up on last week, and the host broached the subject of his unorthodox style, one that had the BBC’s Peter Alliss concluding everything he ever thought he knew about golf was wrong.

“Do people ever say, ‘if you drop your head and lift your elbow . . . ’,” Letterman asked.

“They do say that, but I don’t know what that means,” Bubba chuckled.

Letterman: “Fifty per cent of the recent winners at Augusta have been left-handed.”

Bubba: “Yeah, but 50 per cent are right-handed too.”

Letterman: “How would you describe your style of play, your personal approach to golf?”

Bubba: “Awesome.”

Ah here, it’s getting hard not to love this fella.

He might even return to the French Open one day, despite not entirely loving his trip there last year. Remember? The Eiffel Tower was “that big tower”, the Arc de Triomphe was “an arch in the middle of the road”, the Louvre was “this building that starts with an L”. He couldn’t wait to get out of the place.

This, need it be said, confirmed every prejudice that ever existed against folk called Bubba, but even the French would probably let bygones be bygones just to have the very latest golfing megastar back in town.

He’s a Twitter God too, need it be said, his finest moment his response to a chap called Colin: “Hey Bubba, do you have 140 characters worth of advice to hit my driver straight?”

Bubba: “No.”

Legend.

Speaking of which: Katie Walsh. Third in the Grand National.

“At this stage I’m very much a father rather than a trainer,” Ted Walsh had told the BBC’s Clare Balding before the race, less concerned about Katie winning on his horse that he was for her coming home in one piece.

She did, in some style, but come the end of the BBC’s coverage there was no whooping and cheering, the uproar over their description last year of two horses lying dead on the course with a broken neck and a broken back as “obstacles” prompting them this time around to spare us the happy clappy ‘wonderful sporting institution’ guff.

Balding, then, bid a sombre enough farewell, sensing that, maybe, the Enlightenment might soon catch up with Grand National apologists.

But, just the two dead horses this time, Gold Cup winner Synchronised and According to Pete, both with fractured legs. These things happen, don’t you know?

So, there’ll be some huffing and puffing for a few days, but we’ll be up and running again in a year’s time. They’ll fiddle with the fences, they might reduce the size of the field by a horse or three, and all will be Grand, so to speak.

Aside from alleging that animal deaths during a sporty day-out wasn’t an entirely good thing, the RSPCA’s chief executive Gavin Grant also questioned the overuse of the whip in the final stages, all but confirming that he’s a tree-hugging, animal-loving, sandal-wearing anarchist. Next thing he’ll be pitching a tent at an Occupy Aintree protest.

True, some of the finishers were lashed until their jockeys could lash no more, but look, these people love horses, they know how to lash them in a loving kind of way.

So, go hug a tree, the National’s here to stay. Unless, God forbid, the Enlightenment kicks in and spares us this grotesque spectacle some time soon.